


Unlearn Your Stars

by MissAnnThropic



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s04e10 Beneath the Surface, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 02:46:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9528470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissAnnThropic/pseuds/MissAnnThropic
Summary: Thera turned her eyes toward the ceiling, as if she could see through the miles of earth and snow to the sky beyond.  Something about her seemed to yearn, and for reasons he could not fathom Jonah felt like Thera belonged there.  Among the stars.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> General Warning: I will not tag to your satisfaction. I think tagging is out of control, and I will not tag a fic to the point of spoiling what happens in a fic. I’m an old-school reader who believes the story should be able to surprise you. If that’s a deal-breaker for you, turn back now.
> 
> Cross-posting: I do not consent to have my fics posted to other websites (such a Goodreads).

Firelight from the braziers that were scattered throughout the mines glinted off the sheen of sweat covering Thera’s body. The background noise of machinery and shift workers was distant, muffled in their hideaway. Tucked between furnaces that put off enough heat to beat back the ever-present cold, it wasn’t much of a retreat, but it was theirs. The only place where they could be alone together. Where they could make love properly, taking their time to explore each other.

It was easily Jonah’s favorite place in the world.

It wasn’t perfect, of course. There weren’t enough blankets on the floor to provide much cushion, and there was still the chance someone might stumble upon their hidden spot, but in the mines it was luxurious.

And Jonah had simple needs, really.

For instance, at that moment he had everything he could imagine wanting in the world.

Thera was lying, sated and loose, beside him. Her skin was glowing with the flush of exertion, complexion rosy from her cheeks all the way down to her chest and glistening with sweat. She was still winded, quietly trying to catch her breath. Her lips were kiss-swollen and her short hair disheveled. She was mostly covered with one of the blankets – not to duck Jonah’s gaze, but to be shielded from anyone else’s. The communal nature of the mines was never far from their minds.

Jonah was lying on his side facing her, his back to the entrance (in case someone found them) and head propped up in his hand. He was thoroughly enjoying the view. She had covered up her intimate areas, but one thigh had escaped the blanket in her quest to cool down and the swells of the tops of her breasts beckoned.

Jonah was never one much for impulse control.

He lifted his free hand and lightly rested the tip of his finger against a freckle on her right breast. He traced a path from it to a small mole near her clavicle. He started the trek toward another faint freckle on her left breast.

Thera opened her eyes, looked down at his finger tracing patterns on her skin, then looked over at him. “What are you doing?”

He smiled softly. “Nothing.”

“Nothing, huh?”

“Nope,” he asserted as he went after a freckle between her breasts that was hidden by the blanket but which he knew was there.

Thera smiled lazily. “Well, you just keep doing nothing, then.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Jonah found the freckle then trailed his fingertip back up toward the mole. He was lost in her flesh, then suddenly lost in a strange fugue, jarred from his enjoyment of Thera by an intrusive thought. “It’s like…”

The change in his tone drew her attention. “What?”

Jonah retraced the same pattern in her freckles. “It’s like the night sky.” Jonah looked up to meet her questioning eyes. “I know I can’t remember stars, because I’ve never seen them… but sometimes I could swear I do.”

Thera’s brow furrowed as she studied him in the low light. She looked unsettled by the topic as much as he. “Me too,” she finally said.

“Which is ridiculous, we’ve been underground our entire lives, but…”

“But.” Thera turned her eyes toward the ceiling, as if she could see through the miles of earth and snow to the sky beyond. Something about her seemed to yearn, and for reasons he could not fathom Jonah felt like Thera belonged there. Among the stars.

Maybe part of him ached for the sky, too.

“Probably just from being cooped up down here so long,” Jonah mused as he idly traced the freckle constellation on Thera’s chest again.

“Probably,” Thera parroted absently, lost in thought. “Or maybe we do remember.”

Jonah lifted an eyebrow at that.

“I’m sure Carlin would give us some theory about genetic memories.”

Jonah snorted. “ _Carlin_.”

“What?”

“Just… that guy’s a little flaky.”

“I like him.”

Jonah scowled. “Can we not talk about Carlin right now?”

Thera giggled. The sound did unbelievable things to Jonah. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”

“I’m not… I just don’t want to talk about _any guy_ while I can still taste you.”

Thera blushed. “Fair enough… but there might be something to it.”

“What’s that?” Jonah asked, already preoccupied once more with the softness of her breasts. He was subtly tugging at the blanket held against her chest to test her resistance, and so far she was letting him reveal her body centimeter by glorious centimeter.

“The genetic memory theory,” Thera answered, practically oblivious. “It’s not one I would normally subscribe to, but… I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I can almost remember a past life.” She looked over at him. “Is that crazy?”

He stopped his efforts to uncover her and shook his head. “No, it’s not. I feel that way, too.”

Thera looked at him a moment, eyes searching. “What do you think it means?”

Jonah shrugged. “I think it means we’ve been stuck down here too long.”

Before Thera could carry the conversation further, Jonah leaned down and took one of her nipples into his mouth. She sucked in a breath and her fingers immediately carded through his hair. “I can almost remember stars…” she breathed as he danced his tongue across her.

He pulled off her breast and looked up into her eyes. “I’ll show you stars,” he said with a wolfish grin.

She beamed at him, but a phantom of disquiet lived in the corner. That other life that haunted both of them beyond all reason.

Jonah shoved the unwelcome thoughts away and instead turned his attention to kissing the constellation he’d found on her chest. He wouldn’t bother with night stars when he could just lose himself in hers.

**********

“We have to keep this to ourselves,” Carlin said in a conspiratorial voice. “If the others heard us talking this way, they’d think we were night sick.”

“What if we _are_ night sick?” Jonah asked, because the longer their strange conspiracy of three carried on, the more unstable he felt. Like the world he knew, what he could trust, was crumbling beneath him.

Without understanding why, part of him knew night sickness would be an easier – _better_ – excuse for the bubbling insanity he felt than Carlin being _right_.

Thera shook her head, as if she had to disagree with a night sickness diagnosis, despite herself. “I don’t think so, sir.”

Her final word lanced through Jonah with an unexpected flavor of panic.

“What?” Carlin asked with that tone like he had found piece of an unknown puzzle. He latched onto the word as though he could not sense its poison.

“What?” Thera asked, confused.

“You just called Jonah ‘sir’.”

Thera blinked, surprised at herself, and she looked toward Jonah. He raised his eyebrows in wait. Waiting for her to give a reasonable explanation for the slip. Anything to calm the disquiet churning inside him at that god damn word.

Eventually, she offered up a flimsy, “Well it’s an expression, isn’t it?”

Jonah nodded like he accepted it, but part of him was rioting. She could not call him ‘sir’… it would all come crashing down if she did.

**********

He did not seek out the cracks, but it seemed they were spreading and finding _him_.

Jonah was eating with Carlin and Thera when another worker’s bowl caught his eye. Suddenly, he was barraged with vague half-images. Grandeur and steel beams and throngs of people not dressed in orange.

Jonah offered his bowl in trade, and when the white bowl was in his hands his first wish was to make it go away. But it was permanent and real in his hands, as much as the half-formed memories were, and it was knocking at a creaking door he could not bar.

“Jonah?”

Jonah wondered if Thera felt it, too. That haunted by stars feeling. Like the remnants of a different life stealing into his. He turned the bowl over – that was how it was supposed to be, even though it made _no sense_ – and tried to bring the thought into focus… even as he wanted to push it away. “That means something.”

“What is it?” Thera asked, her mind clearly spinning, grasping for purchase on a reality without footholds.

Jonah didn’t know if he was relieved or on the verge of being driven mad by frustration that she wasn’t feeling the same almost-something he did.

“I don’t know yet.”

He didn’t know _exactly_ , anyway, but he knew down to his bones it meant the end of something important.

Since there was only one thing that mattered to him, he loathed to contemplate the implications of lives beyond their own.

**********

He didn’t want to say it, but he felt like he had to. The three of them had been fixated on this idea that they were supposed to be other people, belonged somewhere else, and solving that mystery was important to Thera. She wanted answers; meanwhile, he felt an ache so strong it burned.

He would seek the truth for her sake, even if it destroyed him.

That alone was why he said, “I remember something. There was a man. He’s bald and wears a short sleeve shirt, and somehow he’s very important to me. I think his name is Homer.”

Thera thought a moment, played with that unpinned grenade, then shook her head. “It doesn’t ring a bell.”

Secret relief surged through him. “You?”

“Just a lot of vague images.”

He would just as soon live with ghosts they could never name if it meant he could keep her. He didn’t know how or why, but he was certain if they were supposed to be other people, those people did not have each other. And that felt like an unacceptable trade.

But Thera kept pushing, kept digging… Jonah wondered if she just didn’t feel the same undercurrent of dread about their possible other selves that he did, or if she didn’t care about him as much as he cared about her. He wasn’t sure what thought upset him more.

It felt like he was losing her either way.

Thera leaned into him and rested her head on his shoulder. “You know, there are things about this place that I like.”

Hope rushed through him. “Really?”

When she looked up at him knowingly, a hint of ‘you idiot’ drowning in the ‘I love you’ in her eyes, he felt like he could breathe again for the first time in days.

His world was full of stars again, the sky’s and hers.

“Would it mean anything if I told you I remember something else?” he asked. 

“What?”

“Feelings.”

“Feelings?” She sounded almost afraid to hope he meant what she thought he did.

That if there were other lives they’d lived, if they had been other people before Jonah and Thera, he had loved her even then. He had always loved her. It was cheesy as all hell, but as sure as he was that he knew a sky full of stars somehow, he knew he’d loved her, too.

“I remember feeling feelings.”

“For me?” she asked in a tentative voice. He didn’t blame her. It was an astounding thing, to imagine they had loved each other once and managed to fall in love a second time.

“No, for Tor,” Jonah teased, because _of course_ her. It had always been her. It would always be her.

Thera laughed and turned her face into his shoulder. He fought the urge to pull her into his arms. He wanted to wrap himself around her and lose himself inside her, to hell with who they might or might not be.

“I don’t remember much,” he said earnestly, “but I do remember that.” And if that was all he ever remembered about his other life, it would be enough. Carlin could have his ‘bigger purpose’ and Thera could keep her stars… Jonah just wanted her by his side.

“So…” Thera trailed. And he got it. What was someone supposed to do with a confession like that? 

“So…I’m just saying.” I loved you before, I love you now, I’ll love you always.

He felt her relax against him, the last tension leaving her body with an unheard exhale. “Well, then I feel better.”

Felt better knowing their love for each other was not unique to the mines. It existed outside their present, beyond the cold and ice of a dying world. Maybe it existed amid the stars.

And yeah, if that was the case, then he felt better, too.

**********

When next they met in their hideaway, Jonah wasn’t sure she would show.

When Thera crept around the pipes that served as a bottleneck entryway to their retreat, he was equal measures surprised and relieved. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

She cocked her head at him, and he almost felt like he was looking at two people. The woman he knew and the one he almost knew. One he had and one he felt like he shouldn’t.

She moved closer and sat down facing him, their thighs pressed together, and asked, “Why wouldn’t I?”

Jonah shrugged. “This whole alternate life thing is kind of weird, isn’t it?”

“I guess. But aren’t you kind of excited to know we’re more than this?” She waved her hand at their dreary surroundings.

“I don’t really mind this.”

The answer seemed to leave her consternated. “These people we’re supposed to be has to be better than what we have here.” Her hand landed softly on his leg, fingers questing thoughtlessly and dangerously toward his inner thigh. It sparked a fire of desire low in his belly, one that was beginning to feel _illicit_. “We thought we knew _stars_ , Jonah. And maybe we were right… maybe we _do_.”

“When we started sleeping together,” he said haltingly, reaching down and taking her wandering hand in his, “we said it felt like we were breaking the rules.”

Thera winced.

“Well, what if we _are_? Just not the rules down here.” Because from day one, he’d been dogged by the certainty he cared about her more than he was supposed to.

The implications were unsettling.

Sudden and fierce determination ignited in Thera’s eyes, and without a word she skinned out of her pants. In the next moment she was straddling his lap, body rocking against his and coaxing him to adopt the same tempo. He was helpless to do anything else.

Hands tugged at clothes and sought out bare flesh, and Thera dropped her hands between them to untie Jonah’s pants and take him in hand. She took him inside her in the next breath.

Jonah groaned against her partially-exposed breasts, where he’d been licking the paths of her stars. She tugged lightly at the hair at the back of his head, and when he pulled back to look at her she leaned in and kissed him. There was a sense of desperation in it, like it could be goodbye.

When she pulled away, she smoothed her hands over his unshaved cheeks and looked him in the eye. “I _won’t_ choose between you and the stars.”

But she would.

And he got it. Thera was meant for so much greater things than toiling away her life in a dirty underground plant.

If they pretended anything different, then they were lying to themselves.

Or maybe not. Jonah felt the panic behind his sternum… the same panic burning in her gaze.

With wetness shining in her eyes, Thera pulled him to her, guided his mouth to one breast as she began to ride him. Jonah moved his hips in time with hers and flicked his tongue over her pebbled nipple.

But no amount of intimacy could stop the feeling they were losing each other, a little more day by day.

Thera made a keening sound, almost like a wounded animal, and Jonah’s heart broke a little. “Shhh,” he pulled away fractionally to hush her.

“ _Jonah_ …”

“C’mere,” he bade, and he hugged her closer. Thera arched against him, needy and bereft, miles of warm skin and freckled constellations.

Nothing he was before would be worth losing this.

Thera moaned brokenly, pressing against him like she wanted to find a way to get him closer than _in her_. Like she could brand him on her body so nothing they might be could change them. So they could not be undone.

He dragged her down tight and hard with hands clutching her hips.

For a timeless moment, there was only the rhythm of their bodies moving together, skin and sweat and lust. And love.

They came together, shattering apart and falling back together in each other’s arms. But when they came back to themselves, they felt a little farther apart for it. Their other lives were imposing their weight between them.

Thera leaned into him when she stopped quaking, curling her arms around his neck and holding tight. He could hear the stutter of her breath as she tried to keep from crying.

“Shhh,” he soothed, running his hands up her back and petting her hair as she tried valiantly not to fall apart.

Jonah wasn’t sure who he was supposed to be, but he hated the asshole for stealing this from him.

He didn’t care what the alternative was, he wanted her stars.

**********

The more his dreams made sense, the more that nameless team leader felt like _him_ , the more resigned he was to losing the best thing in his life.

**********

“So…” Sam cast about for something to say. She settled on, “Colonel.”

It hurt as much as he thought it would, even insulated by his real identity. “Major.”

It felt like an axe falling.

They exchanged crap small talk about Hammond, the lives they finally remembered in their totalities, and it was harder than Jack thought it would be, because _he still remembered being Jonah_. Somehow he thought when one existed the other would not – the way he had not remembered Jack when he was Jonah – but that was not the case _at all_.

He wasn’t sure how he was going to do this. He couldn’t fathom how he was going to unlearn her stars.

“Yes, sir,” she said in response to some inane comment.

His world fell out from under him quietly, without fanfare, and he thought of constellations, Jack O’Neill’s and Jonah’s, and he had never before felt the universe was crowded with more stars than it could hold until that moment.

“Sir…” he muttered remorsefully. Because of course they had to be this, but it didn’t mean he wouldn’t ache for what they lost in the process.

From the look on Sam’s face, he knew she felt the same.

Going home was going to be bittersweet, but Sam deserved her stars. 

Even if that meant Jack gave up his.


	2. Chapter 2

If Sam was going to ponder the ways of the universe and how she always seemed to end up tangled in Jack O’Neill, then she also wondered about the fact she always ended up underground.

It would be too easy, especially in her current mental state, to think it said something meaningful about her life.

The halls of the SGC were infinitely cleaner than the mines, the faces much friendlier, but somehow Sam couldn’t help but see the similarities. Except for one big one. In the mines, she had _him_.

They were each sequestered for hours on separate beds in the infirmary with the curtains pulled closed for privacy. Janet insisted on thorough exams – apparently they’d been gone for almost a month.

To Sam, it felt a lot more like a lifetime.

“Anything happen I should know about?” Janet asked at the beginning of the exam in a low, confidential voice. Sam knew she was asking about injuries, about rape, but all Sam could think of in that instant was Jonah. There had been no other man because it had always been him, and even the biggest bruiser in the mines respected Jonah. Without even knowing she was his responsibility, he kept her safe.

“Does an inch of filth count?” Sam answered instead, holding up her hands and showing off the grime of a slave darkening her fingers, grease and soot and the memory of his skin soaked in the ridges of her fingerprints.

The complaint was a shared one – she could hear Jack bitching about not getting to take a shower _first_ on his own bed on the other end of the infirmary. Clearly the length of time they’d been gone had the medical staff anxious to look them over, filth be damned. Daniel and Teal’c were being cooperative and quiet, but Sam wished they weren’t… she’d feel less edgy if she could hear their voices over Jack’s.

Janet smiled in relief that there were no atrocities she had to put in her friend’s file. “You can shower as soon as we’re done here, I promise. In fact, I insist.”

Sam faked a smile, but her heart just was not in it. It was stuck back in that hidden space between furnaces with a pile of blankets on the floor.

After a thorough medical exam, Janet released her to the showers as long as she returned afterward to wait for the results of her bloodwork. Standard procedure – just another facility’s way of monitoring its workers.

The guys were still being pawed over by the rest of the medical staff, so Sam got to shower first. She reveled in the hot water, but the white tile looked so stark and _institutional_. Maybe that was fitting – maybe she’d come back insane.

Clean for the first time in ages and wearing a fresh set of BDUs, she made her way back to the infirmary to find the guys gone and Janet surprised to see her.

“I was sure you’d go by your lab before heading back here,” Janet said as she beckoned Sam to have a seat on one of the empty beds.

That did sound like a Sam Carter thing to do. For that reason alone, she should probably have done it – _not_ doing it might raise warning flags. Sam just sat and shrugged. “Guess I’ve had enough of work.” She contemplated telling Janet what she’d _really_ wanted to do – to go topside to look at the stars – but in the end she held her tongue.

Janet returned to her work, leaving Sam alone to ponder her place in the universe. It wasn’t a cut-and-dry answer anymore… if it had ever been.

About twenty minutes later, the men of SG-1 returned to the infirmary, washed and wearing clean clothes. The change in appearance in Jack made Sam’s heart thud in her chest, singing with the familiarity of Jack O’Neill but aching with the knowledge that, despite all that, _she still saw Jonah_. In the corners of his mouth, in his hands, in the stubborn cowlick of gray hair that stood up in the back… she remembered how he kissed, how he touched, how it felt to card her fingers through his hair.

She caught herself making eye contact, and for a second she could swear he was looking at her and seeing the same thing. Seeing everything _Thera_.

Sam had to avert her eyes.

“Well,” Janet reported once she had SG-1 gathered together (Daniel sitting on the gurney next to Sam, Teal’c standing sentry-like at her other side, while Jack leaned against a wall), “the good news is that, all things considered, you came through this experience none the worse for wear. A little malnourished and physically and mentally exhausted, but nothing a little down-time and feeding up shouldn’t fix.”

“It really wasn’t all that bad,” Daniel conceded sheepishly as he scratched at a scab on his elbow – a souvenir from when Carlin burned himself on a pipe. “I’ve definitely had worse captivity experiences.”

“As have I,” Teal’c intoned.

Jack didn’t dignify that with an answer. Sam didn’t blame him. If she had his past, she wouldn’t say a word one on the topic, either.

“For the most part, I’d say your health supports that,” Janet answered. “You’ve all lost weight, but nothing too concerning. Although, Sam, you lost quite a bit more than the guys.”

“Keagan hated me,” Sam muttered.

“Keagan?”

“Ah, worker who did double-duty in the mess,” Daniel explained. “Doled out rations at meal times.”

“She always stiffed Carter at chow time,” Jack growled from his place by the wall. 

“Not _always_ ,” Daniel argued.

Jack shot Daniel a glare. “Right, except for the times I harassed her to fork over a damn piece of bread.”

Daniel went wisely silent.

“Sam?” Janet asked in concern.

“It wasn’t a big deal.” Although at the time, yes it was. They were all hungry, and not getting a measly slice of bread was tragic.

“All right, but I want to see you put on fifteen –” at Sam’s incredulous look (even _before_ P3R-118, the CMO frequently bugged Sam to put on about five pounds), Janet amended, “– ten pounds, _at least_ , before you’re cleared for active duty again.”

At that moment, she would have agreed to dying her hair blue and doing interpretive dance to be released to go home. The whole memory-recovery thing had been an ordeal, and she had hit her limit. She was tired and heartsick and confused, and she just wanted to go home.

And she really wanted to see the stars.

Maybe sensing a shared sentiment among the team, Janet quickly wrapped up and released them. Jack had somehow convinced the general to put off the debrief until tomorrow, for which Sam was eternally grateful. She was at the elevator and ascending through solid earth faster than she could say ‘theoretical astrophysicist coming through’.

On the surface, it was night, but the sky was overcast.

Sam kind of felt like crying.

**********

“I am Samantha Carter. I am Samantha Carter. I am Thera.”

Sam had been chanting the same mantra for well over an hour, and the problem was that both felt true to her. Surely once she’d remembered her true identity Thera should have felt like a part she’d played, like an actress taking on a role, but it didn’t feel like that at all.

She _was_ Thera.

But she was also Sam.

She wondered if the rest of the team was feeling as schizophrenic.

She wondered if _he_ did.

“I _am_ Samantha Carter,” she said again to her (mostly dead) house plants. Maybe trying to make it an affirmation to the exclusion of any other.

A browning ivy offered no clarity.

“I am Thera.”

Her world felt no closer to making sense than it did back on the planet.

The only thing she knew for certain, in every fiber of her being, was that she wanted Jonah.

Sam would have ignored the yearning.

Thera did not.

The plants would have to get by, or finish dying, without her. Sam had her car keys in hand and was out the door.

**********

If not professional integrity, then the late hour should have kept Sam from showing up at Jack’s doorstep, but her circadian rhythm had been totally screwed up underground, and she would bet his was, too. She never questioned for a second if he was awake… only who would greet her when he opened the door.

Jack pulled open his front door and stared at her.

For a moment seemingly frozen in time, her heart was pounding and an ache like implosion was crushing her chest. She knew there was a chance the man she came to find wouldn’t be there.

She didn’t know what she’d do if he was gone.

Without a word, his mouth slid into a small smile, and she felt a great weight lift from her shoulders.

He stepped aside to let her in, and he’d barely finished closing the door behind her when she was moving. She pressed her body against his, took his face in her hands, and kissed him.

His hands came to her waist as he kissed her back, tongue slipping past her lips and neatly wresting control from her. She found herself at the mercy of his touch, surrendering to it gladly.

“I was afraid I wouldn’t find you,” Thera breathed raggedly when they eventually broke apart, her hands clutching his shirt so he couldn’t leave.

“I’m here,” Jonah murmured as his hands drifted up her body, ghosting over the shape of her curves… curves he knew by heart.

“Thank god,” Thera whimpered.

Jonah smiled softly, took her hand, and led her down the hall to the bedroom.

In a matter of moments they were naked, then they were falling into bed. Thera invited him between her legs, and Jonah began with his mouth and kissed his way up her body.

When they were face-to-face, Jonah’s hips bracketed by Thera’s thighs, he captured her mouth in a kiss and pushed inside her.

Thera was sure it was better because she hadn’t known if it would ever happen again. She appreciated every inch of his skin _that much more_.

As he found a rhythm, an exquisite tempo of thrust and withdrawal, Thera felt herself tumbling out of the heavens. The stars she still had not seen were crashing all around, and her with them.

“I _told_ you,” she panted, “I wouldn’t choose between you and the stars.” Fuck that and fuck them and, oh god, _fuck her_.

“ _Good_ ,” he growled and did just that.

She shouted when she came because she could. Because they didn’t have to hide from an entire barracks of workers.

Jonah hurried to follow her, burying his face in her neck and letting out a strangled scream as he spilled inside her.

One thing Thera had not had in the mines… she never knew what he sounded like when he came loudly. He sounded raw and vulnerable and it sent a surge of possessiveness through her.

 _Mine_.

She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight. Possibly enough to hurt, but he didn’t complain, and she couldn’t stand to loosen her grip. She couldn’t wipe the grin off her face.

When he caught his breath, he shifted and started to lick that familiar pattern on her chest. Her body’s star map. Thera giggled. Jonah growled and replaced lips with teeth, pretending to bite her, but he didn’t tell her to stop.

Because Jonah didn’t try to stop Thera from giggling.

**********

Afterward, they lay curled together in the euphoric afterglow. Jonah was spooned around her, his arm draped over her and their fingers entwined.

“This is _so_ much better on a mattress,” he said appreciatively.

She hummed agreement. “I can’t believe they never did this. _Years_. How did they do that?”

“Well, you know…”

And she did, because Sam Carter was also her.

“Tell me we don’t have to give this up,” she pleaded.

“Oh, there’s not a chance in hell.”

Thera heaved a sigh of relief.

She should have been in a panic, because while Jonah and Thera might be free to pursue a relationship, Jack and Sam _weren’t_. But maybe that planet – or Jonah – had broken her. Because she would let herself hold the two women inside her as separate beings in order to have this.

Maybe it was just a massive rationalization. Daniel would probably have a theory about it.

Ultimately, Thera would not question the reasoning behind their decision. Not when it gave her exactly what she wanted.

**********

The entire team had to go a round with MacKenzie before Hammond would okay them for light duty on base, pending medical clearance for a return to gate travel. 

Everyone passed their psych eval with flying colors.

Which left Sam to wonder if Daniel and Teal’c were actually back to normal, or if they were _all_ amazing liars.

**********

“It’s kind of like Superman,” Jack said out of the blue one day.

Sam perked up. “It’s _exactly_ like that. There’s no conflict of psyche, no confusion about who we are – Jonah and Thera are like our secret identities. Still _us_ , but different sides of us. In our professional lives we’re out saving the world… but sometimes we’re just Clark and Kara.”

Jack smiled fondly. “I forget sometimes what a geek you are. And aren’t those two related?”

“Now who’s the geek?” Sam teased then shrugged. “So the analogy breaks down pretty fast. The concept’s still sound.” She stopped and looked at Jack dead-on. “I don’t feel crazy.”

“Neither do I.”

“But I’m also two people.”

“Same here.”

Sam cocked her head. “And we’re both okay with that?”

“Kind of have to be. They can’t expect me to forget your constellations.” With that, he stepped into her space and brought a hand to her chest, tracing the pattern of her freckles and moles over the top of her clothes unerringly.

Jonah’s eyes twinkled.

The longer they did this, the more fluid the shifts were between Jack and Jonah, Sam and Thera.

It should have been alarming how easily two people existed in one body. Members of SG-1, of all people, should be wary of any one body going by two names, claiming to be two distinct people.

But denial and love were powerful things.

Besides, they’d gotten away with it. Their act was flawless on base, so quintessentially Jack and Sam that it hurt. No one suspected what was really going on, and it wasn’t a problem.

**********

It wasn’t a problem until suddenly it was.

It was their first mission back on rotation after Sam achieved the weight-gain milestone Janet demanded… and that it was the first mission when things fell apart really said it all.

P76-562 didn’t have bears, but the contraption Sam stepped in was a bear trap nonetheless.

When the team poured through the Stargate earlier than scheduled, Hammond watched Sam hobble through, one arm around Jack’s shoulders as the colonel all but carried her. Her left leg was a mess: boot gone, pant leg torn, and bandages soaked through with blood from the shin down. Teal’c came through backwards, staff weapon at the ready as he covered their retreat. Daniel was hovering near Jack and Sam like a persistent bee.

Hammond called for a medical team as he rushed down to the embarkation room.

He found Sam ash-white with pain, Jack’s expression the very definition of fury, and Daniel being a pest.

“Jack! We have to go back! I can get through to them, I know I can! This civil war has got to stop, people are dying. Jack, are you listening to me? Jack!”

Jack snapped. “ _Damnit, Carlin_!”

Daniel drew up short and gaped at Jack. Teal’c turned at the outburst and lifted an eyebrow.

Hammond came to a stop in front of Jack. “Colonel?”

Jack looked up at him. The look in Jack’s eyes made the general’s blood run cold.

Hammond would _swear_ Jack had no idea who he was.

Suddenly the med team was there, and all questions had to wait as Sam was bundled onto a gurney to be whisked to the infirmary.

When the medics tried to crowd Jack out of the way, Sam exclaimed, “Jonah!” and grabbed onto Jack’s arm.

Jack left for the infirmary with them – never asking permission, not even glancing back at Hammond.

**********

“Dr. Jackson… care to tell me what the hell happened?”

“We arrived on P76-562 to find a society like the one in New England in the early 1690s. The local village was embroiled in a turf war with a coven of witches in the nearby woods. They weren’t actually _witches_ , of course, no more than the people Salem hanged in 1692 were, but they share a similar nature-based religion to neo-Paganism.”

“Daniel Jackson…”

“Right, sorry, thanks, Teal’c. Anyway, General, when we got there these two groups were at each other’s throats. It was all building up to a big show-down. We were trying to stop it, broker some kind of truce, but the leading coven council was already in action setting an ambush for the village forces set to attack at dawn. We were trying to find them – it was nighttime, we could hardly see – and Sam stepped in a trap.”

“Was this an act of war against your team?”

“… I honestly don’t know, General. The planet _does_ have predators, and some _are_ large enough to warrant traps that big, but…”

“I see. And what about what happened in the gate room just now?”

“… I don’t know, General.”

“Teal’c?”

“It would seem the identities Major Carter and Colonel O’Neill were given on P3R-118 have not ceased to exist as we had previously thought.”

“Teal’c… you have a gift for stating the obvious.”

“Thank you, General Hammond.”

**********

Hammond finally made it to the infirmary to find Sam doped up on drugs, her leg treated and bandaged professionally, with Jack at her bedside.

Holding Sam’s hand.

“Colonel O’Neill…”

Jack didn’t react, just continued to watch Sam’s face as he tracked his thumb over the back of her hand.

Daniel came up alongside General Hammond and said carefully, “Jonah…”

Jack looked up and over at them.

Hammond sighed and looked between Jack, Sam, and their unrepentantly clasped hands. “I’d say we have a problem.”

**********

Sam… or was it Thera? Even she didn’t know anymore.

Crisis had proven just how quickly being both could complicate things. In an instant she was Sam Carter, and the next she was Thera, and then both in a strange dichotomy of self.

In either case, General Hammond had waited until she was well enough (though still hospital bed-bound) to have a talk with her and Jack. Or Jonah. Same problem with him, too. She looked at him and wasn’t sure one second to the next which name her heart was calling him.

“The fact of the matter is that this is such a unique situation there’s no procedure in place as to how to proceed,” Hammond said as he stood at the foot of her bed. Thera squeezed Jonah’s hand. He had stubbornly taken her hand when he sat down and did not flinch, not even when Hammond stared at their locked fingers. That part was Jonah… but the fire in his eyes, the rebellious hubris? Well, that was Jack.

She returned her attention to Hammond.

“The first course of action, naturally, would be to submit you both to intensive psychological treatment.”

“To try and get rid of us,” Jonah said point-blank.

Hammond looked uncertain. “To try and eliminate these alternate identities, yes.”

“And if that doesn’t work, you’ll try and get rid of us,” Jack pressed.

Hammond looked flustered and confused. She didn’t blame him. It was starting to confuse her, too.

“Well, if this problem can’t be resolved, then this would be grounds for a medical discharge.” Hammond seemed to sag. “You have to understand that I can’t send either one of you through the gate in this condition.”

“Her leg will heal.”

Sam wasn’t even sure who was sassing the general. Thera wasn’t sure, either.

Hammond was unimpressed. “I’m not talking about Major Carter’s injury, and you know that. Although while we’re on the subject…”

“We know,” Sam grumbled. “Janet told us.”

The trap she’d stepped in was clearly made to mangle, and it did a hell of a job on her. It broke her tibia and fibula, shredded muscles and tendons… she was looking at surgery (possibly several), extensive rehab, and even then there were no guarantees she would get all her mobility back. So she might be out no matter what, and if she was going to be giving up the gate anyway, it seemed stupid to give up _him_ , too.

“And if we refuse?”

Clearly Jack was thinking the same thing… or maybe Jonah was just that adamant he wasn’t going to lose her.

Hammond looked uneasy. “If you refuse to undergo treatment to resolve this mental instability, then you are both off a frontline team and quite likely out of the Air Force.”

Sam would have thought the prospect would be more distressing than it was. Maybe she was just too high on painkillers to panic.

Or maybe Thera was the source of courage she needed.

Jack looked over at her, squeezed her hand, and gave her a Jonah-smile. “So… want to move in with me?”

“Colonel O’Neill!”

“George?” was the calm, challenging response to the general’s outburst.

A plethora of emotions marched rank and file across the general’s face. Anger, fear, disbelief, denial, regret, sadness… the spectrum played out in his eyes and the tightness of his mouth.

“I won’t accept that,” Hammond finally said. “You’re obviously not thinking clearly.”

“I think I am… I think I’m thinking clearly for the first time in years.” At Hammond’s perplexed look, Jack continued, “The most content I’ve been since… well, the most at peace I’ve been in a hell of a long time was when I was a _slave_. That really says it all, don’t you think?”

Hammond had no rejoinder for that.

Jack shrugged. “We can talk about it later,” he conceded, although Sam could hear the futility of that second conversation in his voice even then. They might discuss it further, but it wouldn’t change Jack’s mind.

And Hammond knew his officer well.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Jack.” Hammond winced. “ _Whoever_ you are. You’re taking an awful big risk.”

“When don’t I?”

Hammond almost chuckled and looked back toward Sam. She could see the glimmer of hope he clung to that she, at least, might be a voice of reason. Whatever he saw in her face made him deflate. “I’ll leave you to get some rest… we’ll talk later.”

For all the good that would do.

Hammond left and Sam turned her attention to Jack. He looked over at her, squeezing her hand reassuringly and offering that subterranean smile.

“Did you mean it?” she asked softly.

“Of course I did.” He shifted closer. “Look, I know I’m kind of an old guy, so it’s not much, but for what it’s worth… I give you the rest of my life.”

She smiled. “It’ll take it. And in exchange, I give you my stars.”

He grinned. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”


End file.
